ful, and I doubt
whether a single man escaped.

The soldiers holding the next court, seeing this disaster, placed, ere we
could prevent them, two field-pieces behind the closed gate wherein holes
had been hacked, and with the walls crowded with men with rifles they
began to pour upon us a deadly hail of shot and shell. Once, for a moment
only, Niaro, the provincial governor I had met at Goliba's, fought beside
me, but after exchanging a few breathless words we became again
separated. Little time elapsed ere one and all understood that to remain
long under this galling fire of the palace guards would mean death to us,
therefore it required no further incentive than an appeal from Omar to
cause us to storm the entrance to the court.

"Well done, friends," he shouted. "We have broken down the first defence.
Come, let us sweep away the remainder, but spare the life of the Naya.
Remember I am her son. Again, forward! Zomara giveth strength to your
hands and courage to your hearts. Use them for the purpose he hath
bestowed them upon you."

In the forward movement in response to these loudly-uttered words fearful
cries of rage and despair mingled with hoarse shouts of the vanquished.
Rifles flashed everywhere in the faint morning light, bullets kept up a
singing chorus above our heads, and about me, in the frightful tumult,
gleamed naked blood-stained blades. At first the guards, like those in
the outer court, made a desperate resistance, but soon they showed signs
of weakness, and I could distinguish in the faint grey dawn how gradually
we were driving them back, slowly gaining the entrance to the court,
which, I remembered, was a very large and beautiful one with cool
colonnades, handsome fountains and beautiful flowering trees of a kind I
had never seen in England.

At last, after a fierce struggle, in which the defenders very nearly
succeeded in driving us out or slaughtering us where we stood, the
field-pieces were silenced, a charge of explosive was successfully placed
beneath the gate and a loud roar followed that shook every stone in that
colossal pile.

The ponderous door was shattered and the defenders disorganised by the
suddenness of the disaster. Almost before they were aware of it we had
poured in among them. Then the slaughter was renewed, and the scenes
witnessed on every hand frightful to behold.

Kona and his black followers fought like demons, spearing the soldiers
right and left, always in the van of